More about Wildfowl 95 



To proceed with an account of the day would 

 be tedious. If the geese were behaving well we 

 would go on till sunset, but on a fine still day 

 one drive was usually sufficient to send them 

 straight off to the Hamun. Sometimes we had 

 a second, or even a third line of kulas to which 

 we could change according to circumstances. We 

 often tried the effect of a tame decoy picketed 

 near the kulas. They would strain at their 

 strings, lift up their heads and call loud enough 

 when they saw their brethren high up in the 

 air, but the latter rarely paid them more atten- 

 tion than to drop their long necks and sound 

 one note perhaps it meant "Traitor!" Only 

 a single goose, flying deviatingly about with 

 disconsolate croaks for the vanished army, would 

 sometimes be deceived. 



As evening draws on and the last lot of geese 

 have disappeared from the horizon, the water 

 seems strangely silent. Even the teal and wad- 

 ing birds seem to have gone. Only a few harriers 

 are left wheeling round a cripple or busy over a 

 floating corpse. 



So the dead are totted up and hung about the 

 levies' ponies and we splash back to land. Per- 

 haps before we get there a cripple is espied in 

 the distance and a levy is despatched in pursuit. 

 He urges his tired steed into a feeble gallop in the 



